In May, RBR+TVBR reported on the $3.8 million sale of a valued commercially zoned chunk of land at 4002 W. Gandy Blvd., midway between downtown Tampa and St. Petersburg, by iHeartMedia.
With the land sale, a relocation of the company’s Tampa Bay market operations was put into motion. It is now known where stations including “933 FLZ” and “98Rock” will be headquartered come 2022.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, citing Hillsborough County property records, the iHeartMedia facility was sold on April 29 to LBA LVF VII XII Company LLC. It shares an Irvine, Calif. address with the buyers of a 39-acre Macy’s warehouse property just to the west of the iHeart facility.
That meant the iHeartMedia/Tampa station group comprised of Top 40 WFLZ, once Jacor’s famed “Power Pig”; Adult Contemporary WMTX “Mix 100.7,” Rock WXTB-FM “98 Rock,” Country WFUS-FM “US 103.5,” Hip-Hop/R&B WBTP-FM 95.7 “The Beat,” Sports WDAE-AM and FM Translator W237CW, Talk WFLA-AM 970, “Impact Radio” WHNZ-AM, “Throwback Tampa Bay,” and Tropical WRUB-FM 106.5 in nearby Sarasota would need to find a new home.
They have, the Business Observer reports. The nation’s largest audio media content creator and distributor has signed a 10-year lease for 13,581 square feet in Clearwater.
The new studios will be housed at Waterview at Feather Sound, a six story tower in the Feather Sound Corporate Center Office Park. That’s on busy Ulmerton Street, and the first exit in Pinellas County upon exiting the famed Howard Frankland Bridge from Tampa. The new iHeart facility is the latest broadcast media center to take up space in northeast Pinellas, as CP Communications has a facility 10 minutes to the south of iHeart’s forthcoming new home.
Ciminelli Real Estate Service, which brokered the lease for the landlords, confirmed in a statement sent to Business Observer that the relocation of the station’s studios will happen hopefully by June or July 2022.
